Women's World Cup Preview - West Indies

West Indies have to be the fastest improving women’s cricket side of the past few years and have progressed to such an extent that they are considered dark horses to lift the World Cup. Led by long-term captain Merissa Aguilleira, they boast a strong spin-attack and some powerful batters.

West Indies didn't appear in early World Cups, despite English cricket pioneer Sir Jack Hayward organising tours there in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and eventually made their debut in the 1993 event, where they didn’t disgrace themselves, winning two games out of seven.

The following two World Cups were disappointments - they didn’t win a game in 1997 and didn’t participate in 2000 - before they began their improvement. After narrowly failing to make it out of the group stage in 2005, they did so in 2009 and eventually finished fifth.

Since then, the side, backed heavily by the WICB, has gone from strength to strength and they now boast three or four players that would make it into a World XI. Stafanie Taylor is perhaps the best known and is the current ICC ODI Player of the Year. She usually bats in the top three and lays the platform for Deandra Dottin to add some impetus from the middle-order. Dottin has been in fine form of late and played a starring role for the West Indies as they fought back to level their recent ODI series against South Africa.

On top of their powerful batting, West Indies have arguably the best spinner in the women’s game in the form of off-spinner Anisa Mohammed. She took seven for 14 in the final of the qualifying event, which West Indies won in 2011.

While West Indies, given a fair wind and a slice of luck could just about feasibly emerge victorious in the final on 17th February, a realistic goal would be displacing either New Zealand or India from the expected top four spots. Of the four teams - South Africa, Sri Lanka and Pakistan are the others - that had to qualify for this event, West Indies are, by some margin, the side most likely to cause an upset.

2012-13 Form (most recent match first): WAWLLWLWWWL

15th January: beat South Africa by 22 runs in Dominica13th January: no result v South Africa in Dominica12th January: beat South Africa by 8 wickets in Dominica9th January: lost to South Africa by 4 wickets in St Kitts7th January: lost to South Africa by 80 runs in St Kitts29th April: beat Sri Lanka by 45 runs (D/L) in Barbados27th April: lost to Sri Lanka by 1 wicket in Barbados25th April: beat Sri Lanka by 88 runs in Barbados4th March: beat India by 3 wickets in St Kitts2nd March: beat India by 42 runs in St Kitts29th February: lost to India by 76 runs in St Kitts

Previous Tournament Performances:

1973: Didn’t participate (Trinidad & Tobago and Jamaica both participated)1978, 1982, 1988: Didn’t participate1993: Finished sixth in eight-team event1997: Failed to win a game, finishing last in Group B2000: Didn’t participate2005: Narrowly failed to make it to semi-finals2009: Comfortably progressed to super six stage where they failed to win a game before beating Pakistan in the fifth-place play-off

Fixtures:

31st January v India in Mumbai3rd February v Sri Lanka in Mumbai5th February v England in Mumbai